About

The legal team of Nestlé Portugal provides comprehensive legal advice to the business, covering all aspects of law and serving the internal client as a ‘one stop shop for solutions’, except for tax and labour which are integrated within HR and finance functions. The team works and cooperates with Nestlé’s centre legal team based in Switzerland and teams in other jurisdictions, sharing the same outlook, principles and ethics when doing business. ‘All members of Nestlé Portugal’s legal team are business driven, with strong technical knowledge and deep understanding of the company business. We are a team that is constantly overcoming the challenge of finding the best solution for our 2,000 internal clients’, says the team’s most senior lawyer, Ana Patricia Carvalho. The Nestlé legal team is particularly proud of its innovative programmes and projects to ensure a strong and robust culture of compliance across several areas, with a special focus in antitrust, intellectual property, open innovation, data protection and digital. ‘More than ever, the legal team is seen as a trusted business partner for the business and other teams, including top management. We are bringing competitive advantage to all of our businesses’, Carvalho states. Recently, the team handled the sale of Prolacto, a powder milk factory in Azores, as well as supported the set-up of a group shared services company based in Portugal that provides back office services related to order to cash operations to Western European Nestlé affiliates. ‘Winning with you through passion and commitment is our team motto’, says Carvalho, ‘we are the legal guardians of the company assets, people and values and we are passionate in playing a key role at enabling the business to win, through passion and commitment. We are proud to contribute to Nestlé legal function’s ambition: not only do we want to comply with the law but in addition we want to create significant value for the company, society and people, which requires in-house lawyers to have a strong ethical approach when helping our customers grow, in line with Nestlé’s principles’. Managing three lawyers and one paralegal, Carvalho is the head of legal and compliance at the Portuguese subsidiary of the world’s largest food and beverage company. Ana Rita Andrade serves as senior legal counsel, a legal specialist in antitrust and the second most senior lawyer within the team.